T H E B A S I C S PRIMARY TRUTH God is invisible spirit.

Transcription

1 CORRESPONDING LEVEL WEB #s Defenders: Detectives: Developers: THE GREATNESS OF GOD MATERIALS NEEDED Bible; Teacher Preparation Guide (optional supplements: K4T songbook and PowerPoint files of lyrics) SUGGESTED ORIGINAL KIDS 4 TRUTH SONG All Glory Be to You SUGGESTED HYMNS Great Is Thy Faithfulness, How Great Thou Art, Immortal, Invisible, To God Be the Glory OTHER SONG SUGGESTIONS Older kids: How Wonderful Art Thou, Great Is the Lord Younger kids: He s So Great [and I m So Small], My God Is So Big, This Great God [to the tune of the ABC s song] T H E B A S I C S PRIMARY TRUTH God is invisible spirit. PRIMARY SCRIPTURE PASSAGE John 4:24 WHAT THIS DOCTRINE REVEALS ABOUT GOD As human beings, we are limited. We cannot see God with our normal eyesight because He is a spiritual Being. We cannot fully understand what is meant by the Bible truth that God is spirit, but this truth should humble us and help us trust that our God is much greater than we are. If we could figure out God, then we would be on His level! We ought to praise God that He is no the kind of God that mere humans have all figured out. KNOWLEDGE OBJECTIVES By God s grace... The child will understand that God is not made out of anything we can touch or feel. The child will understand that nobody can see God. The child will understand that God s spiritual and invisible nature are reasons why He is against people worshipping Him in the form of a created thing (e.g., the Israelites golden calf version of Jehovah). The child will understand that God s existence is differen than that of anything or anyone else. The child will understand that God s existence is better than that of anything or anyone else. The child will understand that we can see God through eyes of faith rather than through our normal eyesight. ATTITUDE OBJECTIVES By God s grace... The child will be in awe of our invisible God. The child s faith in this invisible God will grow. The child will desire to worship God in spirit and in truth. 1

2 P R A Y E R T E A C H I N G P H A S E I N T R O (about minutes) OPENER* Many of you have a computer in your home. Have you ever looked at photographs on your family s computer? Maybe your parents took a picture of a sunset while you were on vacation. What do you see on the monitor? You see a beautiful image probably some colorful clouds, maybe a bright reflection in a lake or oceanwater, and, of course, the setting sun itself! But did you know that there is much more to that picture than what you re seeing with your normal eyesight? There are thousands or maybe even millions of pieces of information encoded into a special language that the computer understands and puts together in order to display the picture for you. The visible part of the photo is the image of the setting sun, but there are many, many things about that photo that are invisible to your eyes! There is computer language that looks like gibberish behind the scenes of that photo. That encoded information is the photo s essence, or its most basic, fundamental state. Without those millions of pieces of information, we couldn t see a picture at all! In other words, we think of photos as being visible (something we can see with our normal eyesight), so it is interesting that the most important part of the photo is the part that s invisible to us! DEFINITION Essence Essence is the quality or nature of something that identifies it or makes it what it is, what makes it itself. It is the main, basic -ness of someone or something. God is spirit, so His essence is spiritual. When we say that God is spirit, that means that s what He is in his essence or His fundamental nature. We are never going to be able to comprehend (totally understand) God s essence, because it is so different from ours. But this is at least a starting point for learning about the nature or essence of God: He is an invisible spirit. BIBLE DRILL (#1) Has anyone seen God in His essence? John 1:18 *NOTE: In the intro, we want to recap the primary truth and set the stage to use the primary truth to point the learners back to God. I N S T R U C T I O N & R E I N F O R C E M E N T (about minutes) Many times boys and girls ask: What is God made out of? God isn t made from anything. God is before all things. In fact, God created all visible things. It is difficult for us to think about something existing without having been made out of anything. Human beings are made from things like flesh, muscle, blood, water, and bone. These are all tangible (touchable), visible (see-able) things. They are the materials that we are made out of. But there is more to us than what meets the eye! We humans also are made up of spirit. God has given us a soul, an invisible part that is spirit, so we are part visible material and part invisible spirit. God is different from us! He is not part anything and doesn t have parts. He made all the parts that make us up! God is ALL spirit. He is not just partially spirit. This is why He is invisible to us. We can t see the materials He is made out of, because He was never made out of anything! 2

3 BIBLE DRILL (#2) What did Jesus teach about the characteristics of a spirit? Luke 24:39 COMMENTARY So, what is spirit? If I were going to build a car out of spirit, what material would I use? Well, spirit is no material at all. It is immaterial (invisible, not made up of parts). In John 4:24, Jesus states that God is spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pnuema (NOO-mah) and can mean both wind and spirit. If we think about wind, we can understand a little better what spirit is: DISCUSSION How many of you in here believe in the wind? Have you ever seen the wind? Why do you believe in the wind? What are some ways that God is like wind? OBJECT LESSON [Present a large plastic bag (transparent ones work best to prove the point). Now, swish the bag through the air and fill the bag up with air. Close and hold the top of the bag so that the air stays inside. Ask the children whether they think there is something inside the bag.] Of course there is! But, how do you know? Because of how the bag looks, how it acts. It doesn t lie flat anymore. There is something air or wind or something inside the bag. DISCUSSION We believe in the wind partly because we can see its effects on the things we see around us (blowing leaves, messed-up hair, etc.). What are some of the effects we can see that show us things about God? HISTORICAL ANECDOTE It has been reported that Major Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut (astronaut) to orbit Earth, said this when he reached outer space in 1961: I don t see any God out here. If this report is true, then Major Gagarin didn t understand that God is different from and better than something created. God created our ability to see and the things we can see. God is not Someone Who could be seen with human eyesight or Someone Whom the human mind could totally understand. We cannot see God naturally, with our eyeballs. God has designed it so that we need faith in order to understand that He exists, and that He is a good and powerful God. But the effects of a living God can be seen by physical eyes, and these things teach us that God does exist. BIBLE DRILL (#3) What can we clearly see (with our eyeballs) when we observe God s Creation? Romans 1:20 BIBLE DRILL (#4) This verse tells the story of Moses. What did believing in an invisible God cause Moses to do? Hebrews 11:27 How did Moses see the invisible God? Here is a simple explanation: He saw by faith. Faith is the God-given ability and responsibility to see and believe in Him Who is invisible. 3

4 COMMENTARY The Holman Bible Dictionary says this about why and how we should worship God in spirit: The English word worship was originally spelled worthship and means to acknowledge the worth of the person or object worshipped. We should acknowledge God s worth in spirit (in contrast to material ways) and in truth (in contrast to falsehood). Angels, demons, and even the Devil himself are all spiritual beings. But these spirits are all different from God in many ways. They are different in their purposes. They are different in their character. They are different in their being. For example, these other spirit beings are not omnipresent (all-present, everywhere at once). They cannot be in more than one place at the same time. God is a higher spirit than all these other created spirit-beings. God was not created, He has always been. God is not limited in space or time like the other spirit beings. BIBLE DRILL (#5) How is God described in this verse? 1 Timothy 1:17 BIBLE ILLUSTRATION Some people have seen some of God, but noone has ever seen God in His essence. In Exodus 33:17-18, God told Moses that He would grant Moses request. Moses asked to see God in His glory. Moses wanted to see God with his own eyes! But God knew that a man could not see Him in His essence and live. Have you ever looked straight at the sun on a bright day? What happened? To see God in His essence would probably be like looking at a million suns, a million times brighter. But God granted Moses request as much as He could. God showed Him His glory, but not all of it. Moses only saw a portion of God as God passed by an opening in the cliff, but the Bible says that Moses did not see God s face. Seeing a part of God had a very big impact on Moses! The Bible teaches us that when he went back down from the mountain, Moses face was shining! After that, whenever Moses was in the presence of God, he had to cover his face afterwards because it would shine so brightly. (See Exodus 34:29, 34.) ( ) [You can read more about this story Exodus 34.] ILLUSTRATION The human mind is invisible, and yet we believe it exists. Sure; the brain itself is visible (if you can look inside a skull), but the mind our intelligence and the thoughts we think are invisible to natural eyes. We can understand that a person s mind exists because we can hear their words and watch their actions. Words and actions are the results of thinking and attitudes. Where words and actions are, there must be a mind behind them. DISCUSSION Can you see thoughts or attitudes? Do you believe that people have thoughts and attitudes? Why? 4

5 GETTING BACK TO GOD* {Recap WHAT THIS DOCTRINE REVEALS ABOUT GOD: As human beings, we are limited. We cannot see God with our normal eyesight because He is a spiritual Being. We cannot fully understand what is meant by the Bible truth that God is spirit, but this truth should humble us and help us trust that our God is much greater than we are. If we could figure out God, then we would be on His level! We ought to praise God that He is not the kind of God that mere humans have all figured out.} A Christian man named Matthew Slick wrote down what he told his daughter when she was confused and frustrated about not being able to see God: I told her that in the many years of studying the cults, one of the things that I have learned about them is the comprehensibility of their gods. In other words, you can comprehend them because they are man made. The gods of the cults, the gods invented by the minds of people are not paradoxical. They teach simple things about the gods they promote and have gods designed to satisfy their curiosities and questions. I then told her that if we were to encounter the true God of the universe, it would make sense that we would discover things about Him we cannot comprehend. This is because God is so much greater than us that there would necessarily be things about Him that we cannot understand. It is difficult for us to understand that someone we can t see could possibly be a real, live person. God is of a different and better nature than anything or anyone else. In this sense, He is unique (One of a kind!), different from anyone or anything else. The fact that we cannot get to the bottom of all the mysteries of God is just another reminder that He alone is God! *NOTE: Teachers, please remember that this section should include the fruit of your Teacher Truth Study and one or two personal illustrations or anecdotes from the Personalize It! activity in the Teacher Preparation Phase. A P P L I C A T I O N & A S S E S S M E N T INTERNALIZE IT! from Teacher Preparation Phase (about 5-10 minutes) You might begin this section with: Boys and girls, as I ve been preparing for this TruthTime Lesson, here s what God has been showing me... You might continue by saying: Because of what God is teaching me, here s what is going to be different in my life during this next week... You might conclude with something like this: Finally, here s what God has taught me about Himself through these truths... DISCUSSION TIME QUESTIONS Why is God displeased whenever we decide He must be exactly like something in His Creation? [e.g., visible?] How should we think about God when we pray to Him? Why is it necessary for a Christian to have faith? Will we always need faith? How can we show we believe that the invisible things are more important than the visible things? Why might a blind person have an advantage over people who think they must see something to believe it? 5

6 A P P E N D I C E S O R I F T I M E (optional) ( ) ACTIVITY Ask the children to finish this sentence and then discuss their completed sentences: One thing that God can do because He is not merely a man is... [Teachers, there are literally hundreds of good ways to finish this sentence. The objective is to contrast God s essence and His being with humans. God is immaterial; we are material. Allow children to put these truths into their own words. Examples:...He can be invisible;...he can raise dead people to life again;...he can calm storms;...he can create the universe with just the power of His Word;...He can save me from my sin.] 6